so8 The Voyage Out [igIO

. . . Some of the staff were like dead men with sea-
sickness. I have no sea-sickness in these ships myself
under any conditions, so I enjoyed it all. And as I have
the run of the bridge and can ask as many questions
as I choose I knew all that was going on.

There came the choking of the pumps and the
forlorn attempt to bail out the ship with buckets.

Dec. 2. It was a weird night's work with the howling
gale and the darkness and the immense sea running
over the ship every few minutes, and no engines and
no sail, and we all in the engine-room black as ink,
singing chanties as we passed slopping buckets full of
bilge, each man above slopping a little over the heads
of all of us below him; wet through to the skin, so much
so that some of the party worked altogether naked like
Chinese coolies; and the rush of the wave backwards
and forwards at the bottom grew hourly less in the dim
light of a couple of engine-room oil-lamps whose light
just made the darkness visible—the ship all the time
rolling like a sodden lifeless log, her lee gunwale under
water every time.

And when the outlook appeared as grim as it
could be, a surprising observation shows the man
of action for a moment lost in the visionary.

. . . Just about the time when things looked their
very worst—the sky was like ink and water was every-
where and everyone was as wet inside their oilskins as
the skins were wet without—there came out a most per-
fect and brilliant rainbow for about half a minute or
less and then suddenly and completely went out. If
ever there was a moment when such a message was a
comfort it was just then: it seemed to remove every
shadow of doubt not only as to the present but as to
the final issue of the whole expedition. And from that
moment matters mended, and everything came all right.

But what his Journal leaves unsold, namely his
own personal bearing and example in this peril, is
finely suggested in the words of one who watched